


Whetstone

by Palebluedot



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, not using the MCD warning lest we forget that time black sails revived true love, past James/Miranda/Thomas if you want it to be there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 11:31:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15242439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Palebluedot/pseuds/Palebluedot
Summary: A smile like a muscle spasm flickers across James's lips. God, he hopes they talked to Thomas often. They'd never understand what hit them, and they'd never, ever win the last word.





	Whetstone

There's a fierce, strange pride that comes with the imagining, like the wild exhilaration of a man forced beneath the waves.

It's a picture pretty enough to satisfy countless painters, the martyr calm and resigned and bathed in holy light as death bears steadily down. It wasn't like that. The sun never sees the inside of those cells, some say, and James believes it, believes nothing holy happens there, but in his mind, there is just light enough to see by. Just enough to show his face, jaw set and eyes glaring — no martyr's serenity there, of course not. They might force him down, slam his knees to the stones, but he'd never _kneel._ Not Thomas. Not his bright, brave Thomas, whose last free act was to fling his long arms wide and catch the rain of blows meant for — meant for an ordinary man, a man who would've stood by him, taken his share, been the shield himself if he'd only been given any _say_ in the matter, if Thomas's last words to them both hadn't been a call to _protect_ and to _run_ —

A smile like a muscle spasm flickers across James's lips. God, he hopes they talked to Thomas often. They'd never understand what hit them, and they'd never, ever win the last word. If Thomas's wit and relentless conviction were sharp enough to occasionally nick the fingers of those dearest to him, those who held — hold, held, hold — him most dear, James would love to see the tattered mess he would make of his jailers. Such an eloquent madman his love would make, they'd never have seen his like.

James hears a strained voice quoting scripture and philosophy to the men who beat, starved, bled him, hosting a small, twisted salon in his cell. But this wouldn't be like those salons where he circled, vulture-like and deliberate, around the weakening arguments of those lords who attended for the scandal of it all but blanched the moment anything scandalous was said, when they raised their voices in indignation and panic and found themselves listened to carefully, and promptly found wanting.

This would be much more akin to the hour after the last guest left, when he'd run his hands through wig-flattened hair and rehash it all with a laughing Miranda, then a laughing Miranda and James. When those men were so far from hearing, farther still from understanding, that Thomas didn't bother to hold the laughter and exasperation from his voice, only let his words ring for the satisfaction of assembling them, of knowing them to be good and true and _right._ But of course, those were golden times. He _didn't_ throw his words into an unfeeling abyss, there were ears on either side of him, arms about his waist or his shoulders, fingers intertwined. The world seemed grand and clean and conquerable when he spoke those words, not a twisting, tangled rodent's nest, pocked with miserable little rooms that never saw the sun —

The vision slips. James shuts his eyes against it, smothers it in darkness. He doesn't want to look any further down this last, tattered thread. Peter, ever the gentleman, was tactfully spare with details. Part of James, a part that feeds on the wail pounding in his ears, even now, even still, will always wonder what violence that omission conceals. A wearier part knows it doesn't matter. Blade or rope or unbarred window, despair or defiance, it makes no difference. He's still dead.

He's still dead, and James's sword is sharp enough at last. He lays down the whetstone with a dull sound. The truth is, he knows nothing of those last days, the wretched, wrenching end. And he doesn't know what waits for him across that black water, deep in the corrupted heart of the hold, only that he'll find it — he can smell it now, the salt of the body, the salt of the sea. Despite that uncertainty, one grim surety seeps through his chest. However Thomas met his murderers, he'd wager all the gold that sits heavy on his fingers that when he looks into the face of death avenging, the father will be nothing like the son.

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this made me miss my laptop something fierce, writing by hand is great until you have to edit on your phone.
> 
> I blame this on AstronautSquid, who's my one-stop shop for Florence and the Machine content and inspiration both, for sending me [this song.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICSZdBoYGWk)
> 
> Comments are love! <3


End file.
